The Global School - Beijing (Beijing)

THE GLOBAL SCHOOL – Beijing

The Global School was China’s first independent institute dedicated to design and creative research. Founded on principles of reserach-driven practice, transdisciplinary forms of knowledge-making and radical collaboration, it developed pedagogical programs in partnership with private and public stakeholders, entities, initatives, under investigative scenarios every year defined by real-world predicaments and therefore generate applicable solutions of eco-social impact.

Here you can find out more about its foundational principles, operational structure and people. Read our Q&A MANIFESTO.

Read the interview on Domus magazine.

From the manifesto:

“TGS is a China-native institute for design and creative research dedicated to the species and spaces of the 21st century. In the thickening emergence of transdisciplinary and transectorial intelligence networks that are distinctive of our current era, TGS performs as an aggregating platform of investigative methodologies and modes of production tasked to generate paths of knowledge in and around a new distributed sense of place and global know-how.

Constituted in a tripartite ecosystem, TGS is a production hub, a training lab and a culture centre, invested in shaping actionable scenarios of urban and social change through the power of the creative and scientific imagination.

TGS works every year with chosen themes individuated by its Collegium of Directors, the Experimental Research Bureau and TGS board of advisors. The themes also inform activities of the culture centre and thus public programming.

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Each year commences in June with an opening season of cultural extravaganza, creative brainstorming and academic debate coinciding with the B/Side Design Festival, an initiative organized by TGS.

The two semesters are made of interwoven labs, classes and lectures, demonstrations, field work and on-site production to the delivery of specific projects/outputs at each year end. Such projects will be developed in groupwork and in a process of active professional exchange with different teams in TGS. Mentoring and advising sessions with noted professionals in relevant fields necessary to the incubation of the projects are arranged every month.

The knowledge areas that TSG is engaging in its first two years of operation are 7 and they are: Spatial Practice + Tangible Lab (architecture & urban practice + material studies and histories) – Craftworks & Narrative Spaces (grassroots heritage and material research) – Visual Scapes (graphics and visual systems) – Product Systems (integrated, digital, industrial, textile engineering) – DataDataData (interaction, data analysis, predictive analytics) – Impact Lab (social engagement, community building, urban curation) – Media (broadcasting, communication and production) with disciplinary metissage brought about with tutors and international networks that will range from the visual and cinematic arts, to theatre and music.

Each area program will be shaped in concert with the others, local and international tutorship from a variety of adjacent, complementary fields of study (economics, finance, social studies, engineering, literature, etc.) – these are a mainstay of TGS inclusive and radically collaborative programming.”

The Global School is a project develoeped by B/Side Design.

B/Side Design is an international organization developing and implementing strategies of urban and social impact targeting untapped areas of economic development, which was started from contextual observations in the People’s Republic of China, where it was originally founded in 2017.

Co-founders: Beatrice Leanza, Sarah Orlando.